Funded Projects

The Equitable Sports Participation Screening Project

Project Year

2024

City & State

Oakland, California

Program Name

CATCH Resident

Topic

Access/Barriers to Health Care (LHI)

Program Description

In January of 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics made headlines with the release of updated guidelines to stem the tide of a nationwide increase in childhood obesity rates. The article recognized preventative medicine as the cornerstone of obesity treatment, but also made mention of “the multitude of barriers to treatment that patients and their families face.” Sports inequity, or unequal sports participation of individuals across gender, race, and socioeconomic background, is one barrier to healthy living that has recently been highlighted in the city of Oakland.   A 2022 report showed not only that Oakland children were considerably less active than the national average, but also that white children are participating in organized sports at much higher rates that their Black, Latin-x, and Asian peers. For this reason, the Positive Coaching Alliance called upon Oakland activists, coaches, and school sports champions to create the city’s first Sports Equity Task Force (SETF). The mission of the Task Force is to investigate and address the barriers to equal sports participation in our region. In September of 2022, I was invited to join this coalition. Over several months we worked together to brainstorm solutions to the sports equity dilemma.  One small, but sometimes significant barrier to youth sports participation that my community partners identified is the necessity of the yearly sports physical, a hurdle that rests squarely in the hands of Pediatricians. Disparities in health access, transportation, and ability to take time off work prevent many children from being screened in time to play. As my colleague Lamont Robinson of the Oakland Athletic League (OAL) noted, “If the kids don’t get this done by the time the season starts, they often feel like it’s too late to play at all.” Therefore, we asked the question, “What if we could bring the screening to them? What if we could make it free?”   In August of 2023, we did just that. In conjunction with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the Oakland Athletic league, we brought a group of resident and attending pediatricians to Oakland’s Summer Youth Sports Expo for a pilot screening program, screening over fifty children who otherwise may not have gotten the chance to play. According to one of our partners in Oakland Unified School District: “That was more than all our School-Based Health Centers (SBHC) usually screen in a month.”    The ultimate goal of our Task Force is to use a strengths-based approach to dismantle sports inequity in Oakland. In that regard, at our monthly SETF meetings, we are already looking far beyond the problem presented by sports participation screenings. Nonetheless, as pediatricians, we at Kaiser Permanente (KP) feel it is sensible to start with a barrier that is within our own sphere of influence. Therefore, this year, we plan to expand our pilot into a sustainable set of events that will improve access to sports participation screenings for OUSD students in both Summer and Winter. Through coordination via monthly meetings with the OAL and OUSD, we plan to greatly increase our outreach this year and partner with other SETF members to help shuttle students to the events as needed. We plan to recruit even more physician volunteers, triple our screening capacity, and partner with our School-Based Health Center colleagues to help transition underserved students into appropriate medical homes. The annual sports participation screening is a necessary but sometimes difficult to access hurdle to youth sports equity. While we cannot undo the historical and systemically racist underpinnings of sports inequity in Oakland, with your help, we hope to take this hurdle and change it into a steppingstone easily accessed by all.

Project Goal

To create a set of sustainable events that will improve access to sports participation screenings for underserved students within Oakland Unified School District.

Project Objective 1

Organize and oversee at least two Equitable Sports Participation Screening events in the next fiscal year, ensuring that representatives from Oakland Unified School District’s School Based Health Centers are able to attend.

Project Objective 2

Provide over 150 free sports physical screenings to Oakland Unified School District students within the next fiscal year, with emphasis on providing physicals to children who previously struggled to complete them.

Project Objective 3

Ensure that 90% of eligible children who are screened at The Equitable Sports Participation Screening events establish follow-up care with a School-Based Health Center provided they did not already have a regular medical home.

AAP District

District IX

Institutional Name

TBD

Contact 1

Ross Perry, MD